Quotes on Eternal Vigilance

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

The price of liberty is something more than eternal vigilance. There must also be eternal advance. We can save the rights we have inherited from our fathers only by winning new ones to bequeath our children.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

These are the times that try men's souls.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency.

No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.

You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessings.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.